Aaron David Miller is vice president for new initiatives and a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center, and the author of The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.

Trump’s Jerusalem gambit isn’t a world-ender—it’s just ill-timed, ill-conceived, ill-considered and unmoored from any real strategy that would advance U.S. national interests, peace or security.

Other than that, it’s great.

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Having spent most of my professional life in and around Arab-Israeli negotiations, and a good part of that trying to finesse or avoid dealing with the Jerusalem issue, it’s taken a little while to recover from the jolt of a president unaware of the city’s complexities and willing to confront the issue head-on without any apparent long-term objective or seemingly a clue of what comes next. Now that the shock has worn off, and we’ve seen protests in Arab capitals that were milder than many expected, a few thoughts:

This had nothing to do with foreign policy

If ever there were a triumph of domestic politics and presidential ego over sound policy calculation, Trump’s Jerusalem decision was it. And it was indeed a fitting tribute to the end of Trump’s first year in office where politics on so many issues—pardon the pun—trumped policy (see the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the Paris climate agreement, NAFTA negotiations and even Iran decertification).

These days, all presidents are locked into the permanent campaign, which typically begins the day after an election. But rarely on foreign policy has a president—like a moth to a flame—been drawn so inexorably toward his own political needs. If you believe Sen. Bob Corker, Trump was ready to start the ball rolling on moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem within 24 hours of his inauguration. And we know his national security team barely convinced him to use his power to invoke national security considerations to avoid a congressional mandate to move the embassy last June.

With the end of the year approaching, Steve Bannon’s white board to-do list of campaign promises beckoned. And with a public approval rating in the 30s, when it came to choosing between Evangelicals, Jews and donors like Sheldon Adelson on one hand and Palestinians, Europeans and much of the world on the other, well … there really wasn’t much of a choice, was there? Eager to say, “I am delivering,” and thrilled at the prospects of once again presenting himself as the anti-Obama, President Trump took great relish in butchering yet another sacred cow, overturning decades of U.S. policy.

“It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result,” he said. So he’s trying something new.

Where’s the strategy?

I’d love to believe Trump’s Jerusalem gambit was tethered to a broader peace process informed by Jared Kushner’s closely held conversations with Arabs and Israelis. Maybe recognizing Jerusalem was part of the Kushner strategy to keep Benjamin Netanyahu sweet with ample amounts of honey so that later during the actual negotiations, Trump could apply the vinegar and press him for concessions to the Palestinians. After all, what Israeli prime minister could say no to Trump after the Jerusalem give-away? Or perhaps Kushner had gotten a commitment from his buddy, the Saudi crown prince, that the Saudis and others were now willing to accept a united Jerusalem under Israeli control with only a symbolic Palestinian capital in Abu Dis and/or on a tiny part of east Jerusalem.

All of this strains credulity to the breaking point. These aren’t elements of a real strategy as much as they are a collection of misplaced hopes. Netanyahu won’t pay for something he believes Israel’s owed for free; and the Arabs won’t so easily change their tune on the third-holiest city in Islam, let alone the city’s most contentious site, the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount—certainly not without major concessions from Israel and the U.S., and more likely not at all.

In fact, anyone who thought Trump’s move on Jerusalem was a peace process play should lie down and wait quietly until feeling passes. Any president who was serious about a peace process that’s now about as lively as the zombies on “The Walking Dead” wouldn’t have issued any statement on Jerusalem, certainly not in advance of negotiations. And if they said anything, it would have drawn a distinction between West Jerusalem and contained some kind of nod to the Palestinians’ hopes about the east. Instead, Trump’s statement was so tightly wrapped up in tropes about the importance of Jerusalem to Israel that it left no room whatsoever for any meaningful acknowledgment of Palestinian claims, connections and associations with the city. In a mere 11 minutes, Trump managed to undermine the U.S. role as an effective broker, disrespect Palestinian claims and the sensitivity of the Jerusalem issue and make it harder for Arab states to press the Palestinians and reach out to the Israelis.

“Let’s be clear,” Trump’s U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley said on Sunday, attempting to explain and defend the Jerusalem gambit. “The last 22 years, that was a bargaining chip, and it got us nowhere closer to peace. What he did was take it off the table.”

Yes, it’s perfectly clear: Trump has no strategy to achieve his “ultimate deal.” If he were to put on the table a credible plan, including an outcome that would support a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, things could change.

The peace process was already dead. Did Trump’s statement bury it?

Before we wring our hands, wail, and rend our garments over the president’s statement, let’s be honest about one thing: For at least the last decade and a half, there hasn’t been a credible peace process. There isn’t one now, and the odds of creating one—even before Trump’s Jerusalem gambit—were near zero. No trust between the parties, Grand Canyon-like gaps on the core issues and two leaders unable and unwilling to make big decisions pretty much defined the landscape.

The last thing the so-called peace process needed was another nail in the coffin, certainly not the injection of a nuclear issue like Jerusalem into the mix. Even as it takes credit for a major change in U.S. policy, the administration has gone to great lengths to persuade the world that nothing in fact has changed. And Trump’s statement does suggest the administration hasn’t taken a position on the boundaries, borders and sovereignty of the city.

Palestinians and peace processors everywhere might find some hope here. Indeed, I’m not aware of the U.S. recognizing the capital of any nation without taking a position on that city’s sovereignty borders and boundaries.

But nuance notwithstanding, Trump’s announcement was clearly a determinative statement on how he sees the Jerusalem problem being resolved. Unless the administration clarifies its position, the damage is going to wreak havoc with any effort to create a credible negotiation. We now have an Israeli government that does assert sovereignty over the entire city and is creating additional facts on the ground to ensure there can be no Palestinian capital; a U.S. administration that has acquiesced in that effort and has now given Netanyahu cover to continue to pursue his designs; and a U.S. president who shows no signs of supporting Palestinian claims in the east.

Palestinians, already adrift and dysfunctional, are now in a box: Violence will play into Israel’s hands and delegitimize them, but diplomatic moves like going to the international community to make their case and garner support are keys to an empty room without U.S. support. And finding their way back into a Trump-sponsored negotiation will require assurances that they, too, can aspire to a capital in Jerusalem; no Palestinian leader who wishes to maintain the support of his people can accept otherwise. Without such an outcome there will be no final deal.

How bad is it going to get?

It’s impossible to say, particularly with an issue as volatile as Jerusalem. Violence, confrontation and terror have been part of the Israeli-Palestinian dance since the conflict began, and a variety of actors from Iran to Hamas to even more radical jihadist groups will try to exploit Trump’s blunder. Still, in the wake of the president’s statement, the Palestinian and Arab state reaction have been relatively restrained.

Why? One reason is that Jerusalem crises usually require an on-the-ground detonator—in 1996, it was the opening of the Hasmonean tunnel; in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and Palestinian leaders’ willingness to organize the terror and violence; in 2017, it was the placement of metal detectors on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount that triggered an uproar. This time, at least for now, there are only Trump’s words. After all, you can’t dash the hopes of people who have none.

And there are reasons to think that this may not be your grandfather’s Middle East. The Palestinian public is exhausted and fears the harm a massive uprising could cause. Israel has achieved a stunning level of control over the Palestinian population, aided by robust security cooperation from the Palestinians themselves. Fatah and Hamas, the two main wings of the Palestinian nationalist movement, have limited options for reprisal. And Arab governments, which in the past might have whipped up anti-Israeli fervor to distract from their own misrule, are now mindful that such protests can easily turn against them; they’re also focused on confronting Iran as a threat to regional stability, are tired of the Palestinian issue and hope to maintain close ties with the Trump administration, which gives them no Obama-style lectures about democracy and human rights. Friday’s much-dreaded protests were accordingly small, and the Arab League meeting in Cairo on Saturday was predictably long on words and short on action.

Rather than any explosion of anger, what we’re more likely to witness is the continuation of a long, grim and nasty grind. Their proximity guarantees that Palestinians and Israelis are inextricably bound up together; and even in a frozen conflict, they will continue both to confront and accommodate one another. And while Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has canceled a planned meeting with Vice President Mike Pence, who’s due to travel to the region soon, I’ve seen too many ups and downs to rule out a Palestinian return to some kind of peace process. Trump has reportedly invited Abbas to the White House, so we’ll see how that plays out.

Like rock and roll, the peace process will never die, because nobody has any better ideas. Actual peace, of course, is another matter.

Right now, it seems that Trump’s Jerusalem move was a bone-headed move that has made a bad situation worse, and is very much in keeping with an administration that loves to come up with solutions to problems we don’t have. It is not, as I said at the outset, the end of the world, but it will only reinforce the reality that for the foreseeable future, the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace will likely remain trapped between a two-state solution that’s too important to abandon on one hand, and just too hard to implement on the other.